The present invention generally relates to heat dissipation with regard to semiconductor devices, and more specifically relates to a device and method of converting heat generated by a semiconductor device into electric power.
With the development of larger density, higher speed, multilevel metallization, the problem of heat dissipation on semiconductor devices has become a significant problem. On multilevel dual damascene copper processes (or conventional multilevel Aluminum/Silicon) the number of metal-insulator stacks has increased to the point where convective heat dissipation is no longer effective and the devices will not function properly if the heat build up is too great. For example, an Intel® Pentium 4 processor can have a requirement to dissipate from 75 to 100 Watts at an operating temperature of 75-100 degree Celsius. In addition, the generation of the waste heat causes the unit to use more power, and power that goes into heat does not improve device performance.
Presently, the common solution to this problem is to add fixed element heat exchangers and cooling fans to the back of semiconductor device packages. In certain cases, failures have been documented due to overheating of the devices on an improperly cooled circuit board.
Existing solutions cause application packaging to be bulky and oversized with increased system complexity to incorporate the current methods to reduce the temperatures of the semiconductor packages.